Ulhud S'harrif [Mild Content]

weiming

Be advised, mild content.

The moon hung full and low in the sky, pale and distinct as seen through the crisp desert air, like a gem set in the darkest velvet, so bright that she nearly outshone the stars. Her cold light bathed all of Ulhud S’harrif, the desert city that lay spread out beneath like a slumbering lover.

A chill night wind swept eddies of sand through the deserted boulevards, up and past the ornate, gilt-worked doors that lined the verandas of the wealthy, overlooking the ocean of squat adobe buildings and flat-topped roofs of the poor.

The wind blew through the maze of twisting alleyways in the Yis-s’henna, the crime ridden slums of the eastern district, churning up refuse and scattering vermin before it. It blew past a tightly closed door of rough-hewn wood which flew open, bathing the alley in lurid yellow lamplight and forcefully regurgitating a disheveled middle aged man into the alley.

“Go home, Halifa!” a gravelly voice said from within. The man stumbled through filth across the breadth of the alley and collided with the filthy wall opposite the door, which slammed shut, abruptly cutting off the sound of soft feminine laughter and the odor of cheap perfume which wafted from within.

Smoothing his hand over the sparse oily hair on his pate. The man began to mutter something under his breath, perhaps an orison, perhaps a poem he had learned from a harlot. He began to totter homeward on unsure legs, leaning against the wall for support, but the twisting alleyways deceived his wine-addled senses and carried him deeper into the Yis, instead.

He didn’t much mind this, as it gave him perhaps a moment more to clear his head before stumbling through his door where Nishara would be waiting with more womanish complaints about “minding his station” and idiotic prayers for his “lost soul” as she called it.

Ahead he could make out a fellow denizen of the night moving towards him. Through bleary vision he saw robes of rough, dun-colored material which swept the dust along as the figure walked, his face lost in the shadows of a deep cowl. A censer swung at his side as he paced down the alleyway but no ritual smoke rose from it.

Halifa grabbed the man’s sleeve as he passed. “Could you perhaps show an old man his way back to the Ulhud proper Sahib?” he asked placing both hands together in front of his face in mock penitence. Even slurred, Halifa’s pronunciation of the name of the main district gave him away as a man of distinction, perhaps a wealthy merchant or adviser.

The cowled stranger only ducked his head and proceeded. Stumbling along beside him, Halifa spied the censer swinging at his side and mouthed an admonition. “What is a holy man like yourself doing in the Yis at this hour? Perhaps you have come to save my soul?” Halifa chuckled wryly. “Perhaps you and I are alike, yes Sahib?”

Suddenly, the stranger spoke, his voice soft and toneless, like fine sand shifting over the desert steppes. “Yes we are alike, we are both lost.” he said, placing his hand on the back of the others head. Still in a stupor, Halifa only chuckled as the man’s finger felt along his neck. An instant later a dagger lanced in and out of the base of his skull, severing his spine. Without breaking stride, the stranger slit Halifa’s throat with one hand and pulled his purse from his nerveless fingers with the other.

Turning swiftly down another alley, he leapt onto a barrel and pulled himself up onto one of the lower roofs, leaping from one to the other in the direction of the Ulhud proper. A brick slid loose beneath his foot as he landed on the roof ahead of him, nearly throwing him off balance. He hastily recovered and continued on his way, only a little shaken.

He leapt down silently into an alley, which lead out into one of the main boulevards encircling the Ulhud proper. He crossed swiftly, head down and hands together, hoping the distant lantern-bearing guards who paced back and forth at intervals would not spot him. A deserted bazaar spread out on the other side of the boulevard. Empty stalls dotted the square at intervals and the stranger hastened past them, toward the two and three storied buildings at the end, toward the homes of the wealthy.

Stepping into the shadows at the base of the nearest building, he climbed up once more, feet and hands finding purchase where most could not. Reaching the roof, he crouched down, and placed the small censer between his knees, removing the top.

He then pulled a tiny package from within his robes and rolled a bit of black, brittle stuff between his fingers. Dropping it into the censer, he ignited it and replaced the top.

He crouched there for some moments, spreading his cowl and breathing deeply while the smoke drifted up and into his nose. The rise and fall of his shoulders slowed as the drug took effect, but he could feel his heart racing, and the sharpening of his vision. He raised his head to look at the moon and his cowl fell back. His face was bathed in moonlight, his daring increased a hundredfold.

He realized for the first time just how crisp the air was tonight, how sharp and distinct the moon seemed, as he might have seen in a dream, before he stopped dreaming. To his eyes the city before seemed to shimmer, outlined in a ghostly light. He imagined he could even see the blood pulsing in his arms as he held his hands out before himself.

He bolted to his feet and bound over the rooftops once more, paying no mind to the three storey fall that yawned beneath him as he leapt over each one. His heart beat as though it might burst, and ice flowed through his veins. Death was a wraith chasing at his heels but always one step behind.

Yes he was lost, as he'd told the drunk. Some day he might be just another rotting corpse in an alley. But for now, he had a mission. He peered over the side of the building, and finding the veranda below empty, lowered himself down, landing softly on his toes. Removing a specially prepared thin metal bar, he crouched and inserted it slowly between the double doors.

Struggling to control the slight tremor in his hands, he lifted the latch inside carefully, so as not to make any noise. He then pushed the door ever so slightly, putting his eye to the tiny crack that formed and waiting for it to adjust to the hazy dimness within.

And there he lay. The corpulent form of Haleel Al’Shuri, potentate to the religious council and most recently, obstacle to Shinmar Haddi, a noble who wanted to go to war in the western reach. Haddi claimed the reason was an ancient blood feud with the reach tribes and not the water to be had there as the potentates accused him.

He had been able to persuade most of them with bribes, and now only Al’Shuri still opposed him. Not on principle, but perhaps only holding out for a larger sum. Haddi had decided that assassination would be cheaper.

Al’Shuri lay sprawled on the bed, his paunch only partly covered by silken bedding, his face turned away from the door. The stranger stood and stole through the door, a bar of moonlight falling across the bed like an accusing finger. The stranger stole across the room, dagger at the ready. His soft soled shoes met a thick rug as he approached the side of the bed, silencing his footsteps. Only then did he hear another set of bare feet padding swiftly across the tiles behind him.

Instinctively, he crouched and spun. A stone vase flew over his head and rebounded off the bed, thudding to the floor as a dark figure rushed toward him. The stranger grabbed the attacker’s wrist, turning the extended blade in a deft hold and wrenching the attacker around, shoving him forward and onto the bed and pressing his knee into his back. He brought his dagger beneath the attacker’s throat but hesitated. Somehow in the scuffle Al’Shuri had not awoken, he had not even stirred.

Beneath him, the attacker’s shoulders shook with laughter. “He’s already dead.” she said. The stranger leapt back from her, snatching the blade away in the process. She did not flee or attack, but climbed up onto the bed, and posed there, her robe clung to her full form, accentuating rather than disguising the figure beneath. One long slender leg snaked out of the gossamer fabric to the floor, her toes brushing the rug. She sat and regarded the stranger with mock-seriousness.

Excitement and something else, perhaps madness, danced in her gaze. She lowered her head, and a lock of jet black hair fell, covering half of her face. Her red-painted sumptuous lips spread in a smile, peeling back over starkly white, predatory teeth.

“Don’t look at me.” she said,easing the robe from her shoulder, revealing smooth golden skin. “Haleel looked at me, made his servants and filthy slaves look…and now look at him! Holy man, pah!” she spat. She reached back across the bed and grabbed the man by his fleshy jowls, turning his face toward the stranger. Bruised eyelids sunk into empty sockets where both eyes had been gouged out, and blood soaked the bed where it had drained from the ruin of his throat. The woman’s eyes darted from the dead man’s face back to the strangers and a slow smile spread across her face.

She seemed not at all concerned to be sitting on the same bed with the dead man and instead continued to disrobe, her other hand reaching under her nearly translucent garment to fondle the flesh of her breast. “What will you do now, hassassin?” she asked, arching her back and biting her lip.

The stranger stood before the madwoman, rooted to the spot. Perhaps it was the drug, but he could not tear his eyes away. She lowered her other leg onto the floor and sat facing him, spreading the robe apart, revealing slender, toned thighs, and then the dark hair of her womanhood. “Come, hassassin, bring your dagger and come!” Her hand strayed downward even as she threw her head back and laughed aloud.

Her piercing laugh seemed to free him from a trance, and the stranger turned and fled through the door to the veranda. Still not fully recovered to his senses, he hit the stone rail of the veranda drunkenly and nearly fell over it. He turned and scrambled back up onto the roof as guards outside of the bedchamber began to hammer on the door.

The deranged screams of the woman within and the alarums of the guards echoed out into the night, following him over the rooftops, at his heels but just a step behind.

pickarooney

I liked this one a lot, particularly the almost-familiar setting which is (as far as I know at least) entirely fictitious. I'm hoping it's part of a longer work as it stops just as it's really getting going without us learning anything about the 'stranger'. I especially liked the way the focus of protagonist shifted from Halifa to the unnamed character a couple of paragraphs in.

And now the tedious bit...

I found it a little off-putting that you kept referring to the cowled man as 'the stranger' even after Halifa had died, as essentially he was only a stranger relative to the now-defunct nobleman.

In the opening sentence it's not clear to me whether the moon or the stars are pale and distinct. Also, none of the heavenly bodies are in the air so much as the sky.

The bit about doors overlooking the town reads oddly. A window can overlook something and theoretically an open doorway can, but a door itself?

Minor thing which crops up repeatedly - after a quote you tend to put a full stop or other ending punctuation mark and then capitalise the "He said/She said".

Does grit really leave a stain? It might, but sounds strange to me. I think you might be better off cutting this sentence in two:
The man stumbled through filth across the breadth of the alley and collided with the grit-scattered (?) wall opposite. The door slammed shut behind him, abruptly cutting off the sound of soft feminine laughter and the odor of cheap perfume which wafted from within.

Likewise, the next sentence meanders a bit. Maybe cut it after 'legs' and 'harlot'.

Another minor point - use commas to separate lists of adjectives.

A censer swung at his side as he paced down the alleyway but no ritual smoke rose from it.

The 'but' indicates that it's a little unusual for the censer not to be lit (it took me ages to remember what one of those was from back when I was an altar boy ) whereas outside of a ceremony one would probably not expect it to be in use.

I find 'denizen' peculiar here as this refers to an inhabitant of a place and the night is not a location. Probably OK under poetic licencing laws though.

I think that the term of address 'Sahib' is mostly associated with India whereas the story 'feels' more Middle-Eastern/North African. 'Sahib' is from the Arabic, but there it has more the sense of a disciple of Mohammed. I'd expet him to say Ya'akh or at a stretch Sayedy.

I expect a preposition, even a verb phrase, after 'proceeded' (proceeded on his way/proceeded to walk on). This might be just me.

I wouldn't immediately associate 'well educated' with 'wealthy merchant' as this is often a status achieved through graft and guile rather than book-learning. A lawyer or cleric might be more suitable.

There seems to be an accidental extra 'like' here:
his voice like soft and toneless,

'Steppes' are vast grasslands; desert sand would not really have any place shifting over it.

"a dagger lanced in and out of the spot where his spine joined the base of his skull, severing it" - I don't think you can use 'lance' intransitively (you can lance a boil, for example) and it's odd to use one weapon as a verb to describe the movement of another.
The 'it' in question, whether it's the skull or the spine, is highly unlikely to be severed with one thrust of a blade. You may mean the spinal cord?

"Without breaking stride, the stranger slit Halifa’s throat with one and pulled his purse from his nerveless fingers with the other."

Was he walking quickly while stabbing Halifa? I think 'hand' is missing. 'Nerveless' doesn't seem quite right. It can mean several things, but assuming you don't mean his hand was not nervous and the nerves haven't physically been removed, that leaves you with the definition meaning enfeebled. In this situation with (presumably) his spinal column severed, his hand would be beyond this stage and completely without sensation. Maybe 'numb', 'deadened' or 'paralyzed'?

'completed' with leaps grates on me for some reason, possibly because it involved one single movement. I would use 'performed' myself.

"Had it been a bit to the side it might have snapped his ankle, but the stranger ignored this"

This just doesn't fit with the situation. Amidst the drama of a nighttime murder and escape across the rooftops, the villain ignores the lethal danger of a pot plant? I don't think this bit is needed at all.

(I've just learned that US English has the same spelling for what we would write as 'story' (tale) and 'storey' (floor of a building))

"feet and had s finding purchase where most could not on windowsills and hooks for clothing rods"

Typo in 'hands'. I don't understand 'where most could not'. 'Hooks for clothing rods' is confusing. Maybe rephrase as 'clothing rod hooks' or something simpler and more immediately understandable. 'Gutters' even (if they have need of such things in this place).

The next paragraph seems most illogical. Assuming it's pure hashish resin that he's smoking, the effects (racing heart, sharpened vision, increased confidence) are completely inconsistent with the drug. These are more like the effects of cocaine or crystal meth. The old association of the hashashin with the drug is anomalous. Ask any stoner Also, hash resin is sticky and malleable rather than brittle.

By the next paragraph, the hash seems to have taken on the properties of peyote...

"Bolted" as an intransitive verb means to run away quickly. Here, he is merely standing up quickly.

"the three story fall that yawned"
The gap might yawn, but I don't think the potential fall can.

"Yes he was lost, and some day he’d be a rotting corpse in an alley"
This is obviously a metaphoric sense of 'lost' as we find out straight away that he knows exactly where he is, but maybe it should be more clear?

"hazy dimness" is a bit tautological, particularly as 'hazy', when used non figuratively, means (partially) obscured by mist.

"potentate to the religious council and most recently obstacle to"

There's something not quite right about the use of 'obstacle' here that I can't put my finger on. Whereas he can be 'the' potentate or even 'one of the potentates' he can't really be 'the' obstacle. Imagine he has a title: "Al'Shuri, master of the dungeon" of "Al'Shuri, potentate to the council" work fine but "Al'Shuri, obstacle to Shinmar Haddi" doesn't really.

"Haddi claimed the reason was an ancient blood feud with the reach tribes and not the water to be had there as the potentates accused him."

I had to re-read the previous sentence to be reminded what 'the reason' referred to. "As the potentates accused him" is not grammatically sound. You have to accuse someone of something. "As the potentates insisted" or similar would work.

"but only Al’Shuri still opposed him"
Use either 'but' or 'only', not both. It's fine to use it in a sentence like:
"Ten men went into battle, but only one returned."
In the first clause the expectation of a complete success is there.
In your sentence, however, 'most' already tells us that not all have been convinced so 'but only' does not work.

"Not on principle, but perhaps only holding out for a larger sum"
Here you begin with an affirmation and then continue with a suggestion. If you're sure that he didn't refuse on principle you must know that it was for monetary reasons.

"The stranger stood and crept through the door, and bar of moonlight falling across the bed like an accusing finger."
'Crept' has several meanings, but it just sounds paradoxical as the most common meaning is to move close to the ground.
Typo of 'a' as 'and'.

Would his footsteps not already be quiet as he creeps in soft shoes?

"accentuating rather than disguising the figure beneath"
A figure-hugging garment would tend to do that, no real need to point out that it doesn't do the opposite. On the other hand, a robe is generally loose-fitting so the chick must be really fat

How can a scream be a step behind (and for that matter if something or someone is at his heels, they're scarecely a step behind).

weiming

>pickarooney; thanks for your close reading. I've tried to catch all of the sillier mistakes, like continuity, orientation, run-ons (my bane), punctuation and some usage/descriptions. I agonized over the bit about the plant and yes, its garbage. I don't know if the new device is any better though. There really is nothing like having a second pair of eyes look at my work.

Other things I left the same:

"proceed" already has a preposition, "pro". The latin verb means literally "to go/walk forward" and today, to continue, especially after interruption. Though modern English has a habit of wanting to slap redundant prepositions on everything.

"lance" has an intransitive form.

You can actually google "denizens of the night". I won't go into the usage of "denizen", just...trust me.

As far as sand in the steppes, see Gobi.

As far as Halifa's form of address for the stranger, the drug and other specific details, I plead license, this is fantasy genre.

There is a larger story here, though I'm still mulling over the details. It might be a day or two before I put pen to paper (or...whatever it is writers do in this crazy age).

pickarooney

The loose brick works much better.
Regarding the drug, if you want it to be something other than hashish, some imaginary drug from a parallel universe, all well and good, but then I think you should avoid referring to the hashashin (or however that's spelled). If he were to chew khat instead of smoking it would be a lot more consistent with the effects, but this would perhaps make the censer redundant.

You've made an incomplete sentence in the edit:
"Smoothing his hand over the sparse oily hair on his pate. The man began to mutter something under his breath, perhaps an orison, perhaps a poem he had learned from a harlot"
It would be OK to put the stop/capital after 'breath' instead.

I don't want to labour the point, but the Gobi is a desert, the Steppes are the grasslands which border it on one side - 'desert steppes' is a bit like saying 'forest ocean'.

There are still a few grammatical errors which take somewhat from the piece but I'm more interested in reading the next bit at this stage.